Writing Out Loud About The Search for Life in Space Exploration

Or, A Little Mars & Origins of Life History Before Tackling Today’s Space Exploration Debates, Part II

Books recommended by interviewee scientist Sherwood Chang

One of the exciting things about blogs is the fact that we can update them with new information, make corrections, add comments. They are not static in time and space like traditional journalism or nonfiction writing.

Yesterday I had an email response from my new scientist friend turned organic cattle rancher, Sherwood Chang, whom I quoted in my previous post (and will be quoting in the next couple of posts). He made a few corrections and additions, which I have added right into the text of the post itself (see below).

I have a Master’s degree in creative nonfiction. Why I chose “creative” nonfiction rather than traditional nonfiction has to do with my respect for creativity itself. One of the reasons that creative nonfiction was established as a genre was in consideration of the need to make the reading of “facts” enjoyable, rather than a dry boring academic, experience. Creative nonfiction allows an author to experiment with style, presentation and content in ways that make the information it contains interesting. Being a new media / multimedia artist as well as author, I also believe that a creative approach to writing about information and facts also allows us writers to present our content more successfully – using new methods to convey information, rather than sticking with traditional dry, emotionless and style-less words and diagrams.

I could have taken the suggestions of Sherwood and simply changed and updated my previous post, but, instead, I went to the text and crossed out the text I was eliminating and typed the new text in bold, so that readers could actually see my process, my interaction with the scientist. To me what is exciting about this is that it brings the words and process itself to life. It makes writing a public process, a shared process. As someone I quoted in an earlier post said, “Blogging is writing out loud.” (I will look up my source later and update this sentence)

Oh, and thank you Sherwood for also recommending two relevant books for us, which I will post on the book page soon, too: “For an historical review and summary of recent (up to 2002) work on the origin of life, I suggest the book, Life’s Origin (2002), ed. J. William Schopf, U. of Ca. Press. A more recent and broader based book is by W. Sullivan and J. Baross, eds.(2007) Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology.”

My next episode on the search for life in space exploration next week. . . .